


Comes the Rain

by eponymous_rose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: 100-1000 Words, Canon - TV, Episode Related, Episode Tag, F/M, Family, POV Third Person, Post-Canon, Science Fiction, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponymous_rose/pseuds/eponymous_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'...there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties...' - the world ends and Susan is free.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comes the Rain

"Just the beginning," he says, and Big Ben tolls.

Susan thinks of David, of stolen kisses and wanting to see things grow again, of being together in terrible danger and just wanting it to _end_, to live a life with ordinary schools, and furtive glances on the train, and passion kept just out of sight - not in fear, but in the cheerful mischief of young love. She's tired of running, of disappearing in an impossible box before the first snowflakes fall on the world they've saved or destroyed.

She wants to see a year pass, a real year, to celebrate birthdays and learn Christmas carols and plant a flower in the spring to see it grow and die and live again.

And she doesn't want adventure, not really, not anymore. She's seen the way Barbara's eyes light up as they land on some alien world, full of history stretching back so terribly far; she's heard Ian, awestruck, whisper his uncertain science in the face of the impossible. It's everything to them, a game for grown-ups she's managed to outgrow.

("I don't know who I really am," she'd whispered once to Grandfather, and he'd chuckled and said: "Who does?")

But Grandfather needs her; he's older now, no longer the wiry, restless man who'd taken her away so long ago. There's a new weight in his step, and she knows that he's afraid of losing her, or, worse, of losing part of his memories of her to his own regeneration.

"Please stay," David says. "Please stay here with me."

And it's selfish, marvellously, wondrously so, but she wants to. She wants to leave Grandfather, leave the TARDIS and Ian and Barbara and forever and start living out her days, one by one, like anyone would.

She wants to be anyone.

"I've double-locked the doors," Grandfather says, in a voice that is too firm. "You can't get in."

He's terrified, she knows, frightened at the idea of trusting these humans without her to act as intermediary, still irrationally afraid that they might turn on him, might betray. He's so scared of death, of losing, of forgetting-

But he's still speaking, and she wants to smile at his theatrical bearing, at the pride in his eyes.

He's telling her that she's grown up, that she should leave her childhood with him and start a life of her own, but she knows that it's the other way around: he's ready, now, to let go her hand, to step into the unknown, to _trust_ without her prompting.

("But that's what growing up is, Susan," Barbara says, gentle, smiling. "It's making mistakes for yourself.")

"Just go forward in all your beliefs," he says, and then she knows that it will be all right, that it must be, and the very thought is terrifying, "and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine."

Perfection in absence; the TARDIS disappears, leaving the absurd posters, the rubble, the dirty, clogged river.

"Susan?" says David, and she knows without looking that his hand is outstretched, waiting for hers. A part of her wonders what he'll make of the fantastic tales she'll tell him someday, whether he'll think her mad or wonderful or both.

And then she shivers; she knows that he will die long before she does, that she could someday regenerate and have holes in her mind where their love once lived.

She takes his hand.

"He knew," David says. "He knew you could never leave him."

She has to think in a straight line now-

("You simply can't work on three of the dimensions!" she says, and Mr. Chesterton treats it as a joke, because he's always had walls on all side of him.)

-and see her days through, one by one.

She doesn't speak, but the TARDIS key slips between her fingers and onto the grass, a flicker of life on the rubble-strewn riverbank, a curiosity in a junkyard.

Susan puts one foot in front of the other, walking in a line, and suddenly she's laughing, and then David's laughing too, perplexed but relieved.

"What is it?" he says.

She points down. "I've still only got the one shoe."

And then he chuckles and scoops her into his arms, and her straight line curves and dips and spins away into infinity, wonderful and mad, full of impossible potential.

"Have you ever thought," she whispers in his ear, "about what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension?"

David blinks. "Well, no," he says. "I can't say that I have."

She laughs, then, wild and giddy and free as the future stretches out before them, always out of reach, and as the past dies away, to be left behind for good.

"Neither have I," she says.


End file.
